


Feel This

by tempus_teapot (dreadnot)



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-13
Updated: 2011-05-13
Packaged: 2017-10-19 07:48:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/198567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreadnot/pseuds/tempus_teapot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anders tries less-than-rational means to try to get a Tranquil Karl to feel something, anything. Kmeme request filled with buckets of angst.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feel This

That bastard Hawke hadn’t shown. Anders cursed to himself and swore that when he returned to his clinic he would _burn_ the maps he had of the Deep Roads. It would be fair, it would be right, it would be _just._

Never trust a man who chose daggers over a sword or staff seemed to be the lesson of the night.

The mage waited in the shadows until the sky began turned to the murk between and dark and light that always reminded Anders of lantern light through a black gauze scrim. He ached to go inside to find Karl, but without backup he would be virtually helpless if there were templars waiting.

The thought of templars almost seemed to summon them, the way a carelessly-spoken name might summon a demon. He shrank back into the deepest shadows and held his breath to hear them speak as they left the chantry.

“Never trust an apostate,” one grumbled.

“Should have known he wouldn’t actually care about the man. Those staff-strokers don’t really care about anyone but themselves,” groused another. “I’m for bed.”

“Shut up,” snapped a lieutenant. “We’ll try again tomorrow night. It’s not like that other staff is going anywhere. “

 _That other staff?_

Anders waited until the hunting party had clattered its way out of the courtyard, heading back to the Gallows before he slipped into the chantry and crept through the nave toward the transept. Karl should be upstairs.

He barely breathed the entire time. This was a fool’s errand, but he simply could not leave Karl if there was a chance to free him. He owed the man for all they had shared, all they had been to one another. It hadn’t been love, but it had been as close as either of them had dared.

He finally drew a deep, relieved breath when he saw Karl sitting on a bed in the alcove on the second floor. Karl seemed so still, so calm; it wasn’t what Anders had expected, but it was nearly dawn, and after the night’s stress, perhaps it wasn’t so strange.

He called the man’s name, barely above a whisper. “Karl. It’s time to—“

Karl turned to look at him and Anders froze in horror. Justice swelled in him, feeding on his rage like a leech that had found an artery pulsing blood straight into its hungry mouth.

 **“No!”**

Karl turned calm eyes on him. Of course he was calm, he was beyond calm, he was Tranquil. He would never feel, never fear, never love, barely live. He was Nothing in a Karl mask.

“Anders,” Karl said placidly. “I knew you would come, but why did you come so late?”

Anders - Justice - one and both closed the distance between them and lifted Karl by the front of his robe. **“No. How did they do this?”**

Karl’s pale blue eyes reflected the first sparks of Justice’s angry glow. “They performed the Rite of Tranquility. You will be spared this pain once you are Tranquil as well.”

Anders sucked in a breath as though Karl had just struck him. Justice’s fire faded, although the spirit still roiled inside him, straining to burst the bonds of mere human flesh to burn away all the injustice wrought upon a man whose only sin had been having been born with the mark of magic.

He released Karl to let him fall back onto the bed and reached out to touch the horrible Chantry brand on the man’s forehead.

“Oh, Karl… what have they done?” he murmured. “How could they take away who you are?”

“They did not take away who I am,” Karl demurred. “I am still Karl, but I am no longer an apostate.”

“Still Karl?” Anders glanced over his shoulder out of a habit formed when he was just a hormonal young man in the Fereldan Circle, and when he saw no one watching, he turned back to Karl and leaned down to kiss his lips, once again clutching the front of the man’s robe to hold him.

For all that his lips were warm, he still may as well have kissed a corpse. Karl didn’t respond, only held himself still.

Anders pulled back and said, “You aren’t Karl. Karl would kiss me back. Karl could make my knees weak when he kissed me back.”

He jerked on Karl’s robe, lifting him off the bed again until he stood passively.

“Or this…” Anders ran a hand down Karl’s chest. “Do you remember in Fereldan? You and I hiding from the templars for ten or fifteen minutes between lessons?”

He tipped his hand until the heel pressed over Karl’s groin. “I could get you hard with a touch. I know we’re older, but this should remind you. Don’t you remember, Karl?”

He could feel Karl, soft through his robes, penis flaccid under his hand. No reaction at all. Part of Anders wasn’t just hurt, he was _insulted._

Karl patiently nodded. “I remember, but that is the past. I have no wants now. Not even that one.”

“What if I ordered you?” Anders snapped. “Could you perform then like a good little slave?”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them. What kind of monster was he?

“I’m sorry.” He cradled Karl’s cheek in his hand for a moment, looking into his familiar, beloved features. “I’m not like them. I don’t want to use you, but I do want you to remember. Let’s try this a different way.”

He raised Karl’s robe until the hem was above his waist. “Sit down.”

Karl obediently sat and Anders took his staff off, setting it on the floor by the bed before he settled on his knees between Karl’s legs. When they had been lovers, this would have been enough for Karl to at least start to grow hard, but his cock still lay limp and disinterested.

Anders pressed a kiss to Karl’s thigh, then his other thigh. He drew his tongue over Karl’s scrotum. Nothing. He cupped it in a hand and drew Karl’s cock between his lips, easily taking its entirety in its limp state.

Nothing. Not when he sucked, not when he stroked. Nothing.

Justice stirred again when Anders finally pulled away, lips wet with saliva to look up at Karl, who was still regarding him dispassionately.

This was _wrong!_

It hurt him so deeply that it sliced through his self-control into the heart of his rage. This time Anders couldn’t hold Justice back; the spirit swelled and nearly burst from his human skin in fissures of brilliant blue energy.

Justice looked up at Karl with lambent blue eyes and swore, **“I will destroy them for what they have done to you. They will never touch another mage!”**

Karl’s lifeless gaze suddenly came alight in the reflection of the Fade spirit’s power.

“A— Anders? Anders, what have you done?”

There was life in the question, there was fear. It was enough to drive Justice back once again, leaving bare flickers of blue around Anders’ eyes before they extinguished entirely.

“Karl!” He lunged up from his knees and caught Karl’s mouth with a desperate kiss, almost crying with relief and pain and shame.

Karl kissed him back, holding him like a lifeline, giving him the kiss that Anders had sought before he had ended up on his knees before a man who was more like a flesh puppet. This was Karl.

For a blissful moment, Anders thought maybe this could be fixed after all, then Karl pulled away.

“It’s like a you brought a piece of the Fade with you, but it’s fading already.”

Anders shook his head. “No. I can—I can fix this.”

“Can you?” Karl asked. He had always known Anders so well.

Anders had to shake his head again. No. No, he couldn’t.

Karl slid a hand down Anders’ side to where his knife rested in its sheath. He drew the knife and pressed it into Anders’ hand. “Do this for me. Quickly. I want to die like myself, not like the thing they made me. Please.”

Anders looked down, and saw Karl’s bare legs and exposed groin and couldn’t contain a moan of pain. He pulled Karl’s robe down before he closed his fingers over the dagger’s hilt.

“Now, Anders.”

Anders leaned up on his knees to press a last kiss to Karl’s mouth and drove the dagger home. He caught the man’s last breath and breathed it out on an oath that he would avenge this man and all the others who had been violated by the Chantry.


End file.
